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Using IOR to control reflectance

- [Instructor] You probably know that…index of refraction, or IOR, controls…how light bends through a transparent medium.…It's the density of the material.…In the physical material in 3ds Max,…we see in the reflections section,…there's an IOR parameter.…That should be an indicator that…index of refraction also affects reflections,…and it's easiest to see if we turn…the metalness down to 0, although it will work in any mode.…I'll set metalness to 0,…and we have an IOR at the default of 1.52,…which is about the same as standard glass.…

We can increase or decrease the strength of the highlights…by playing with this IOR parameter,…and that in turn will affect this…Advanced Reflectance Parameters section,…which is defaulted to accept a value by IOR.…So as we change the IOR value,…we will change the intensity of highlights…either on a facing angle, meaning a polygon…that's directly facing the camera,…or on edge, which are polygons…that are facing 90 degrees away from the camera.…

I'll increase the IOR to a value of 2,…

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Released

10/4/2016

Physically based rendering (PBR) simulates the way light works in the real world. It achieves greater realism with less effort than traditional 3D rendering. This course focuses on PBR shading techniques in 3ds Max, using the Physical Material to achieve photorealistic surfaces such as stone, glass, and metal. Author Aaron F. Ross also looks at building shading networks, and combining and adjusting maps in interesting ways. Procedural maps such as ambient occlusion and substance deserve special attention, and you'll also see how to bake them out to bitmap files for cross-application and renderer compatibility. By the end of the course, you'll have a firm foundation in advanced shading workflows in 3ds Max.